"Speed-dating style portfolio-viewing day for women artists working with sculpture and/or in the expanding field of sculpture and have a connection to the Göteborg Region" at Galleri BOX, Wednesday May 18th.

For our 6th and last presentation in the Sculpture Talk series we decided to mix things up a bit in our goal to raise visibility for women sculptors. Instead of having a formal presentation followed by a Q & A session we decided to have a portfolio viewing day.

10 Sculptors were selected through an Open-Call whom got a chance to share their practice with 5 curators; British artist/curator Rose Gibbs, Ylva-Li Ahlstöm och Elin Aldén from Galleri Slätten in Malmö. For a re-cap on the day go here.

Slätten is a gallery with focus on women´s artistic practice. We wanted to create a place where we are the norm, where we are always number one and where we never need to compete with each other. We wanted this because the combination of women and creativity, equals a fantastic place where anything can happen. Gallery Slätten in Malmö exhibits female artists working in all media. We present a new exhibition every month. The opening receptions have many visitors and the response to our concept has been positive. It is obvious that our focus fills a gap, or rather that we have created something completely new. A gallery just for women."
Gallery Slätten is run by photographers Ylva-Li Ahlström and Elin Aldén who first met at Östra Grevie folkhögskola. Their common starting point in their art practice is that they have both made a conscious choice. They only photograph women. And in their gallery work they only collaborate with women. Ylva-Li received her BFA in Fine Art Photography from Akademi Valand in Göteborg. She mainly works with film and photography, always focusing on women´s stories. Elin studied photography at Fotoskolan in Gamleby, Östra Grevie folkhögskola and at Kbh film og fotoskole. Her photography focuses mainly on sisterhood and struggle.
www.Slätten

Rose Gibbs uses sound intervention, sculpture and participatory performance as a way to consider the possibilities of consciousness-raising. Most recently she has used speech and the voice as a way to explore how iteration and re-iteration affects our feedback loops. She questions if we can become something other than we are, if we can escape our own reflexive loops, by experiencing and speaking other people´s words. She uses the voice to explore the space between the collective and individual experiences of identity, inviting participants to join communal readings. Similarly her objects become an invitation for group making, where the object can serves as a vessel for temporary community and conversation, creating a provisional space or carrier for a coming together in group action. All of these are attempts to reconsider the dual program of feminism: both a method that seeks to recognize gendered group treatment, while also finding a route to autonomy and liberation from such categorization, where these two aims are often felt to be at odds with one another. Her practice seeks to reflect and harness this oscillating movement in an attempt to disrupt ideological hegemony without resting easy. www.rosegibbs.com

sculptureHUB is a networking site and blog for sculptors, created by Snowball Cultural Productions in response to the uneven gender representation within the sculpture field. Aimed at women sculptors in the Nordic countries with aspirations to reach beyond the field and geographical boundaries and the long-term goal to organize an exhibition. Run by initiator Josefina Posch and reserach curator Sofia Landström.

The talk is part of the series of talks with sculpture focus organised by Josefina Posch - sculptureHUB / Snowball Cultural Productions during 2015/16 in collaboration with Galleri Box also supported by Göteborg Stads Kultur.

"The Expanding Field & The Collective as Strategy" at Galleri Box, Saturday May 14th.

Documentation image by Martin Hultén

In our fifth Sculpture Talk we expanded upon the field of sculpture and presented Sisters of Jam - Mikaela Kristensen in dialog with Karolina Pahlén curator at Borås Art Museum. We also showed part of S.O.J video installation from Kate Millett Farm. “It takes a million years to be a woman”, video 10 min. The talk also included The Temporary Separatists - artist Rose Gibbs and Sofia Landström. For a re-cap on the discussion go here.

S.O.J. – Sisters of Jam was founded in 2008 by Moa and Mikaela Krestesen they have been working in interdisciplinary art projects using multiple media – photography, video, drawing, installation and text – in an ongoing investigation of community, solitude, historiography and continuity. Their work seeks to address a feminist dialogue over generations and geographies. A dialogue that is both virtual and allegorical; that reaches backwards and forwards and at the same time tells us something new. Sisters of Jam use collaborative work methods to overcome boundaries of genres and become wider, greater and stronger. www.sistersofjam.com

Karolina Pahlén is since 2010 curator for moving image at Borås Art Museum. With an education in visual art, film and curating at the International Center of Photography (NYC, University Collage of Arts (Sthlm) and the University of Stockholms , her curatorial practice focuses on the moving image as well as the creation of platforms for art and knowledge production. Amongst her latest curatorial projects are; the Screens & mirrors, exhibition at Borås Art Museum; Archaelogy & Exorcisms: Moving Image and the Archive, seminar and publication with Steven Cairns (ICA, London), the exhibition Syster in which Sisters of Jam participated and they are also collaborating in the project IN 21ST CENTURY ZESTERHOOD. http://systerboras.blogspot.se/2014/11/antligen-far-vi-ta-plats.html

The Temporary Separatists is a Swedish-British collective seeks to explore the use of collectivism as a feminist methodology in art practice. The Temporary Separatists propose to use the exhibition space as a site to explore collective making. They hope to consider, to learn by doing, if separatist collective spaces and modes of working can provide a feminist methodology that resists hierarchical and individualistic artistic practice. This exhibition will examine authorship, individualism, autonomy and gender and ask if separatist collective working can provide a space for a radical shift of focus away from the hegemony of an atomizing neoliberal ideology. This exhibition will explore these ideas through practice.

The talk is part of the series of talks with sculpture focus organised by Josefina Posch - sculptureHUB / Snowball Cultural Productions during 2015/16 in collaboration with Galleri Box also supported by Göteborg Stads Kultur.

"Research Trip to New York City" April 5-10th where we visited spaces and had meeting with curators, writers, researchers, theorists and artists with an interest in the subject at large.
For a summary on the visit please go here.

The research trip was made possible through the support of the Nordic Culture Point and Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation.

In their lecture at Göteborgs Konsthall, Dr. Ann M. Fox and Jessica Cooley began by discussing the exhibition “Re/Formations: Disability, Women, and Sculpture” that they co-curated at the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College, North Carolina expanding into a discussion concerning crip theory, disability aesthetics, and the presence of disability in modern and contemporary art (including the art of HIV/AIDS). “Re/Formations” is the first exhibition to address the intersection between disability identity and female identity. Five female artists, four of whom are disabled, exhibited sculpture that examined disability not as mental or physical insufficiency limited to a small minority, but as a widespread and diffuse cultural identity, like race or sexual orientation. It is not art as therapy or rehabilitation. It is art emerging from within disability culture that is at once activist and aesthetically innovative.

Dr. Ann M. Fox is a Professor of English at Davidson College where she specializes in 20th- and 21st-century dramatic literature and disability studies. In 2009, Fox co-curated two disability-related exhibitions with Jessica Cooley: Re/Formations: Disability, Women, and Sculpture, and STARING. Fox co-curated the exhibition “Re/Presenting HIV/AIDS” in the fall of 2014.

Jessica Cooley is a scholar-curator working at the intersections of curatorial and museum studies, studies of contemporary art and material culture, queer theory, and disability studies. Currently, Jessica is a Ph.D. candidate in the art history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is working on her dissertation titled “Crip Materiality: The Conservation of Art in the United States, Disability, and the Art of Failure.” Before Madison, Jessica completed her Master’s degree in art history at Temple University and from 2006 to 2010 she served as the Assistant Curator for Davidson College's Van Every/Smith Galleries where she curated a number of exhibitions related to disability studies, archive theory, and the history of photography.

The presentation at Göteborgs Konsthall is the fourth in the sculpture lecture series organized by artist Josefina Posch and curator Sofia Landström – sculptureHUB. Produced by Snowball Cultural Productions supported by Göteborgs Stad Kultur, Stiftelsen Längmanska Kulturfonden, SWEA- North Carolina and Galleri Box.

On March 10th we were invited to present sculptureHUB part of The feminist strategies festival in Göteborg. It was further part of the International Women’s day celebration at a-venue! An explosion of cultural expressions. During four days they presented a wide program of concerts, speeches, performances, video art, textile & jewelry works, pussy print and girl magazine workshops, installations, lectures, zines and more!

The feminist strategies festival was arranged by A-venue and Konstkåren HDK section at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts.

Thank you all for a great round -table discussions where a lot of interesting issues came up and important points made. It was a pleasure to see and hear you speak about your work during our one-on-one portfolie-viewings on the day after. For a re-cap on the dialog go here.

Thank you all for joining us for the network meeting and round-table discussion in Helsinki. Thursday Dec 10th HIAP - Gallery Augusta, Suomenlinna, Helsinki 17:10-18:00 Presentation of SculptureHUB and Q & A 18:00-19:20 Informal round table discussion.
For more information on the meeting go here

Documentation images by Salla Lahtinen/HIAP

The SculptureHUB is supported by The Nordic Culture Point and the Helsinki meeting is made possible by the support by the Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP)

The third presentation in our Sculpture Lecture series focused on the relation between Sculpture, Photography and Drawing. Jon Wood, research curator and art historian, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, and Co-editor of Sculpture Journal will presented his lecture `Drawing on Sculpture: Graphic Interventions on the Photographic Surface´.

Jon Wood was invited through IASPIS expert visit program and the presentation is organized by Galleri Box, Snowball Cultural Productions/SculptureHUB and Lasse Lindkvist - Akademi Valand.

Dr. Jon Wood is ‘Research Curator’ at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, where he coordinates the academic research programme and curates exhibitions. He is also co-editor of the Sculpture Journal. He specialises in modern and contemporary sculpture, particularly sculpture in Britain and Europe. He has written widely on the work of many sculptors, including: Brancusi, Moore, Picasso, Giacometti, Gaudier-Brzeska, Boccioni and contemporaries such as Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon and Phyllida Barlow. He also has a particular research interest in the artist's studio and his studio writings have been recently reprinted in The Fall of the Studio (Valiz, 2009), The Studio Reader (University of Chicago Press, 2010) and The Studio (MIT/Whitechapel, 2012). Recent publications include: Modern Sculpture Reader (with Potts and Hulks) (HMI 2007, and Getty 2012), The Sculpture of Bill Woodrow (with Julia Kelly) (Lund Humphries, 2013), a new edition of H.S. Ede's Savage Messiah (with Barassi and Silber) (2011) and Articulate Objects: Voice, Sculpture, and Performance (with Satz) (2009) and recent exhibitions and exhibition catalogues include: Making It: Sculpture in Britain 1977-1986 (2015), 1913: The Shape of Time (2012-13), United Enemies: The Problem of Sculpture in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s (2011-12), Nice Style: The World’s First Pose Band (2011) and Carl Plackman: Sculpture, Drawing, Writing (Huddersfield Art Gallery, 2007).

The second presentation in our sculpture lecture series focused on Social Sculpture. Beatrice Catanzaro and Cristiana Bottigella presented Bait al Karama (House of Dignity), a slow, immersive and localized participatory art project, independently initiated in 2010 in Nablus, Palestine in collaboration with local activist Fatima Kadumy.

The talk was moderated by SculptureHUB – Josefina Posch, Artist and founder, and Sofia Landström, Researcher and Curator.

Bait al Karama is a women centre located in an Ottoman building at the heart of the Old City of Nablus and is home to the foremost Palestinian cooking-school run entirely by women. With the income generated through the school, the restaurant and culinary tours, the centre organises educational trainings and programs for women and children of the community. The long term community project Bait al Karama became a Slow Food Convivium in 2012. Since early stages, food was understood as a strategy for aggregation, cultural mediation and income generation. Palestinian women are beholder of gestures and tastes of the local culinary cultural heritage – an heritage that is quickly disappearing under the economical pressure of the occupation. The presentation at Röda Sten will focus both on the artistic quality and on the social-economical remit of the project.

Beatrice Catanzaro’s work creates the conditions for shared learning and public participation, and have been produced throughout Europe, the Middle East, and India. In 2010, Catanzaro moved to Palestine, where she initiated Bait al Karama. As a doctoral candidate in Social Sculpture Research at the Oxford Brookes University, in Oxford, UK, she currently teaches classes on research practices at the International Academy of Art Palestine, in Ramallah.

Cristiana Bottigella is a cultural manager based in London. After working as the Director of the Education Office and the Head of the artist-in-residence program at Cittadellarte-Pistoletto Foundation (Italy) for ten years, she moved to the UK, where she works as an independent curator. In 2012 she co- founded hARTslane, an experimental art project space providing a platform to emerging artists.

The presentation is part of a sculpture talk series organised by Snowball Cultural Productions: SculptureHUB in collaboration with Galleri Box, Röda Sten konsthall and co-funded by Stiftelsen Längmanska kulturfonden.

Thank you all who joined us for the first Sculpture Hub talk that was held Friday February 27th at Gallery Box, Göteborg, Sweden.

Women sculptors as a forum for dialog concerning dissent and 3D art:

London based artist Rose Gibbs, curator Sofia Landström and artist/curator Josefina Posch will discuss their mutual interest in the complexities of `Women Only Shows´. Taking as a point of departure Posch´s upcoming networking project that focus on Nordic women sculptors, the talk will progress and expand into a discussion concerning dissent, models of resistance as well as Gibbs and Landströms curatorial/art collective `The Temporary Separatists´ and their upcoming project `Views All My Own´ that explores women only collectives and consist of a study day in London and an exhibition in Denmark during the summer/autumn 2015.

For the past few years curator Sofia Landström has focused on the analysis and writings concerning feminism, exhibitions and feminist theorizing. Her interest for exhibitions as a place for discussion and dialog began during her time as chairman at Galleri Pictura in Lund, where she realized how the exhibition premises not only encompasses that what is hung on the walls but is also influenced by everything that is taking place outside; politics, economy and social changes. Landströms current interest takes departure in the `Women-Only-Shows´ concept, using three Swedish exhibitions as starting-point; `Kvinnfolk´ (1975) , `Störning´ (1993) and `Syster´ (2014). She investigates questions surrounding dissent but also in what way these exhibitions can be seen as `models of resistance´ where new narratives are being created as oppose to ghettoized phenomenon. At the moment Landström is in the middle of finishing up her MFA in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins in London.

Rose Gibbs uses sound intervention, sculpture and participatory performance as a way to consider the possibilities of consciousness-raising. Most recently she has used speech and the voice as a way to explore how iteration and re-iteration affects our feedback loops. She questions if we can become something other than we are, if we can escape our own reflexive loops, by experiencing and speaking other people´s words. She uses the voice to explore the space between the collective and individual experiences of identity, inviting participants to join communal readings. Similarly her objects become an invitation for group making, where the object can serves as a vessel for temporary community and conversation, creating a provisional space or carrier for a coming together in group action. All of these are attempts to reconsider the dual program of feminism: both a method that seeks to recognize gendered group treatment, while also finding a route to autonomy and liberation from such categorization, where these two aims are often felt to be at odds with one another. Her practice seeks to reflect and harness this oscillating movement in an attempt to disrupt ideological hegemony without resting easy.
London based Rose Gibbs has organized the discussions; Taking Up Space –Women Only Shows - hosted by The Contemporary Art Society and Central Saint Martins, as well as a Reproducing Motherhood at Shoreditch House. Recent performances have included Performing Protest, Becoming Radical and Slogans for Becoming at The Function Room London, and Invitation at Wysing Art Centre. She writes a blog for Huffington Post, and works with the grass roots feminist activist organization The East London Fawcett Group and in 2013 was director of The One Billion Rising Arts Festival.

Gothenburg based Josefina Posch works with a number of different techniques and media; installation, drawing, sound, aromas and social experiments - always from a sculptors perspective. She explores the dividing line between the private and the public, working with the tension between a scientific and a voyeuristic form of observation, with focus on the point where technology, cloning, averages, ideas and fiction meet. Posch has had solo exhibitions in Sweden,China, USA and the UK and participated in several Artist-in-Residencies around the world. Posch is also active as a curator and is the founder of Snowball Cultural Productions that organized and produced exhibitions and seminars such as;
nordic art / Between Miracles at CCA-Tbilisi, Georgia and the Nordic Tour of the Guerrilla Girls. Currently Josefina Posch is developing a network and seminar series titled; Female Sculptors as forum for dialog concerning dissent and 3D art, that focuses on Nordic Female Sculptors, supported by the Nordic Ministry of Culture. Since 2012 she is gallery manager at Galleri Box and representative on the IASPIS Gothenburg chapter board.